Brothers Rian and Rory Maguire twin up to expand fast-growing Fort Worth real estate company

If 2023 and the first half of last year were slow for identical twin brothers Rian and Rory Maguire, this year has shaped up to be a big one for their Fort Worth real estate firm CHC Development.

In two weeks, the Maguires expect to close on the purchase of the 53,000-square-foot North Main Mercado mixed-use building at 1500 N. Main St. They’ve quietly purchased — with two partners — an office building on Bailey Avenue that they’re renovating into new headquarters for all three firms. The Maguires have a tenant in mind for the space they’re leaving at 451 S. Main St. in the South Main Urban Village. 

The brothers also have an array of other projects they’re working on, from renovating medical office buildings off of St. Louis Avenue on the Near Southside and Riverglen Drive off of South Hulen Street to augmenting their holdings of industrial properties. It’s been a big swing from early last year, when construction loans were hard to find and development was dead except for projects already financed, Rian Maguire said.

“Halfway through last year, we started seeing momentum pick up, and we rounded out last year with three projects under contract within 24 hours, and we knew we’re gonna have a real busy spring,” he said.

Since then, the list of projects kept growing.

With lenders requiring real estate interests to come up with more cash in deals, CHC has been on a fundraising spree. The firm estimates it raised $67.9 million over the company’s life — including $22 million this year.

The firm estimates it developed and/or acquired 923,763 square feet of mixed-use commercial space over time along with nearly 600 acres of land.

“We’ve raised more capital in the first half of this year, basically times two, than we’ve ever done historically, in any year that our company’s been in existence,” Rian Maguire said.

The Mercado acquisition will pair up with the similar, historic Vinnedge Building at 2100 N. Main, an office building CHC owns. 

The Mercado, built in 2006, is 51% leased. It was 85% full until it recently lost a tenant, the Maguires said. They don’t feel it will take a significant investment — maybe some updated lighting, including outdoor; tenant spaces; and bathrooms — to make it “pop.”

”We think this is going to be a great building,” Rian Maguire said. He added, “It’s got a lot of character.”

CHC’s work in building relationships paid off with the Mercado, the Maguires said. Another group put the property under contract and, knowing what CHC had done with Vinnedge, called the Maguires to offer a partnership.

The property has substantial parking, and the tenant who left was paying below-market rent. That gives the Maguires the opportunity to break up the space into smaller ones paying higher rents, they said.

Buying into the North Main corridor now makes sense ahead of Panther Island’s projected growth and connection of downtown to the Stockyards and other surrounding areas.

“It’s really just starting, but it’s happening,” Rian Maguire said.

The idea for the new headquarters project bubbled up from CHC’s annual planning session in November, where the twins discussed their 451 S. Main building.

CHC bought it in 2018. “It was kind of always projected to be a seven- to 10-year project,” Rory Maguire said. 

The brothers expect to move into their new offices in October, doubling the size of their headquarters. Finding a tenant for their 2,400-square-foot space on South Main might prove to be easy — an existing tenant in the building is interested, they said.

All of this is some distance from where the brothers, who grew up in Denton, were when as 33-year-olds they left jobs and formed their own company. CHC is an acronym for The Carnegie Holding Co., a nod to their father, who was originally from Carnegie, Oklahoma.

The Maguires — who each earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Texas at Arlington and then went into careers in engineering and brokerage and, later, real estate development and private equity, respectively — formed the company in 2009, fearing they were on the cusp of losing their jobs during the post-recession. “Then we didn’t lose our jobs,” Rory jokes.

Finally, Rory says, he “just woke up one day” and called Rian. “It was about 6 a.m. I was like, I think I gotta turn in my letter of resignation today. It’s time. Rian turned in his right behind me, about three weeks later.”

Their parents were college professors, and the brothers had no familial business background. But they remember, as teenagers, coming up with the real estate idea after realizing somebody must be making money from the buildings they saw about town.

Their first project: the acquisition of a 30,000-square-foot retail center in front of Grapevine Mills. A banker friend clued them in on the deal — a property that was underwater financially, and the bank was willing to take a write down on it.

Their partners included three people Rory Maguire formerly worked with in private equity who had formed their own company. 

“It was their first deal, too,” Rian Maguire said. “They put in all the equity, and we closed on that and turned it around, really in a year and a half. Signed new leases on longer terms, and sold it and knocked it out of the park.”

Early on, the brothers were “extremely conservative” in the deals they pursued and turned down — and what assumptions they used. One building they turned down: a former historic firehouse in the South Main Village. 

“We passed on that at $700,000 because we thought it was overpriced,” Rory Maguire says. It found subsequent life as a distillery and now as a hotel they can see from their current offices.

The market’s turn toward the better happened quickly, even in the high-interest-rate environment.

“Early last year, if you sent out a loan package to six banks, nine banks, you might get a term sheet,” Rian Maguire says. “It was just tough to make the numbers work. Lease rates weren’t matching up with interest rates and construction costs. You’ve got to have all those in line to make a project work. I feel pretty sure right now, we sent out a loan package to six leaders, we’d probably get six term sheets.”

Still, they approach each project with a lot of cash.

For a long time, “numbers worked at 70% debt, 30% equity,” Rory Maguire says. “We’re generally 40% to 45% equity in every project now.”

Today, CHC estimates its portfolio breaks down as 42% industrial; 26% medical office; 19% office; 5% mixed use; and 5% retail. 

With light industrial popular among lenders and investors, CHC last year purchased the 150,000-square-foot Blue Mound Business Park in north Fort Worth, and this year closed on an adjacent 150,000-square-foot second phase. CHC also owns the Benbrook Commerce Center business park on Highway 377 in Benbrook.

Among its medical office projects, for years a significant piece of the company’s pie, CHC is converting an existing building on Riverglen Drive off of South Hulen Street. 

The building had several lives, for years the home of the Texas Boys Choir and, most recently, a day care. CHC is renovating it to a two-story medical office building, and converting its basement to underground parking.

It’s been on the market for some time since a fire years back. The Maguires cleaned up the site and day care playground, cut down dead trees, and put up a sign.

“The phones have been ringing off the hook,” Rian Maguire said. 

Scott Nishimura is a senior editor for the Documenters program at the Fort Worth Report. Reach him at scott.nishimura@fortworthreport.org. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.

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